Séries S12 - The Graduate Gavel

The Graduate Gavel was founded in February 1963 as a monthly publication by the Graduate Student Society in order to serve as a medium of communication between Queen’s University's different graduate programs. The newsletter consisted of news articles covering events pertaining to the Graduate Student Society and opinion pieces on aspects of university life such as education, athletics, politics and the arts. The publication regularly had literary features, profiles of graduate students, activities announcement, hockey and other athletic reports. Despite attempts to reach a wide audience within campus, by June 1964 there was significant budget issues with the publication taking 60% of the Graduate Student Society income. The newsletter was reformatted from plain separate pages to increased amount of articles in columns per pages and increased advertisement. Along with this reformatting, there was attempt to capture a wider audience with more controversial issues particularly focusing on international events like the Vietnam war and failures of health insurance for graduate students. But despite these attempts by September 6 1969, there was increased budget demands with the renovations of the Graduate House on campus which meant cutting back on other projects of the society, including The Gavel.